Your Radio Reading Service

Sydney: 1224 AM & 100.5 FM; Newcastle & the lower Hunter: 100.5FM 2RPH Digital

Expansion of 2RPH to Wollongong

Introduction

2RPH is a special purpose community radio station which provides a radio reading service for people who cannot access published material, read independently, handle or understand printed material. Our audience also includes listeners who for many other reasons find it difficult to access or interpret text-based journalism and information.

We broadcast across the Sydney basin and the broader Newcastle/Lower Hunter region on both the AM (1224AM) and FM (100.5FM) frequencies, and in Sydney on 2RPH Digital, and increasingly via streaming and on-demand.  Our service features readings from the top daily Australian newspapers, domestic magazines, and books as well as international publications.  

This service is delivered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to over 100,000 weekly listeners by around 200 volunteers who present 100 programs to an audience of over 100,000 weekly listeners (40% people with disability; 60% people without disability).

2RPH is part of a network of RPH stations, of which there are a total of seven stations: Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, and Darwin.

Our listeners

Our listeners include people with low vision or people who often can’t hold a newspaper, magazine or book because of physical disabilities caused by conditions such as strokes, arthritis, or cerebral palsy, etc. The service provides highly valued access to published material from the daily newspapers, national and international magazines, and book readings.

Additionally, people listen to 2RPH while they are driving, or working at home or at business, simply because they enjoy the programming. Some hospitals and nursing homes broadcast 2RPH through their ‘in-house’ systems.

The service:

1. Provides informative, enabling and entertaining content and information on issues and events of interest to a diversified audience.
2. Has a significant footprint across NSW through broadcast and other distribution arrangements.
3. Strengthens our position as a respected, niche station in the media through strategic partnerships.

Why are we wanting to expand to Wollongong?

Wollongong is a major city within NSW and has long been part of the 2RPH ambition, which until now has been thwarted by a lack of resources.  We are now in a position to realise this ambition but which to do so with a considered, collaborative approach.   

The value of the service to Wollongong listeners:

2RPH contributes to the cohesion of the community and an individual’s wellbeing by:

• Empowering listeners: providing information that assists those with a disability; those managing their mental health or who are older and unable to access appropriate support and services;
• Informing the public: helping drive an understanding of the issues facing our community of interest and the challenges of living with disability, mental illness, or ageing;
• Utilizing the service to support relevant strategies such as Ageing Well in NSW: Seniors Strategy 2021–2031.
• Reducing isolation: via our broadcasting capability helping more Australians increase their participation in the community by becoming aware of events, information and opportunities, and in so doing reduce a sense of isolation;
• Enriching our listeners well-being and engagement: by presenting engaging and entertaining programs to help develop an understanding of their place in the community and to help foster participation in public discourse.

Potential Involvement and contribution by local organisations and services

In developing local programs 2RPH seeks partnerships and collaboration with other relevant organisations to facilitate a sense of belonging: by informing and connecting with those who are part of, or care for, a member of its community of interest.

Longer term outcomes may include:

• the development of technical and presentation skills as a pathway to employment
• ILC grant opportunities.

Initial collaboration may include:

• The establishment of a reference group from the region
• Collaborated programming
• The use of an audio booth to enable material to be produced locally
• Content produced locally either for broadcast, podcast or on demand
• Local voices presenting the live to-air-shift
• Local stories being told with the potential to be broadcast across our network.

Implementation

We are on schedule to transmit from Brokers Nose on 93.3FM from October 2021, via with a soft launch followed by a public launch prior to Christmas.

As part of our practice of including local papers in our schedule we will read selected articles from the Illawarra Mercury. It is intended the initial program will be read from 1300 to 1400, Mon-Friday.

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